"Digital Classics in Arabic" gets funding from the British Academy

Digital Classics in Arabic (DCA)

Makdisi, George,1980. The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh University Press.

        After a delay of one year(!), my project "Digital Classics in Arabic", funded by the British Academy and hosted by the Institute of Classical Studies (ICS) of the University of London, has officially started. It has been a long journey from my office in Cairo until I arrived here safe and sound in London on Sunday the 7th of July 2019. I can not express how happy I am to start working in the ICS and I'm sure that, with the help and expertise of Gabriel Bodard, Charlotte Roueché and Valeria vitale, this project will achieve its goals and provide both our national and international classical and papyrological community with important tools and gadgets. For the moment I am just announcing the quick-off of this long-delayed project. So, dear classical and papyrological friends and colleagues (in and outside Egypt) stay tuned DCA is coming!

      As for the reasons behind this long delay, I will be giving a detailed account of this trip in a blogpost that will appear soon in "Everday Orientalism". For those who unfamiliar with this blog; this is the blog I, Katherine Blouin, and Rachel Mairs, are running for almost three years now. It's main focus is the discourse of Orientalism, Colonialism, Nationalism, politicized past in and around Antiquities-related disciplines. In addition to regular posts about these topics in English, French and Arabic, we are running an Egypt-based yearly workshop that brings together scholars from the Middle East, Europe, and North America, in order to reflect on the many ways in which Orientalism has shaped the field of “Classics” and its relationship to Egypt’s territory, history, and heritage. To know more about this initiative and our other activities, please visit the blog here https://everydayorientalism.wordpress.com/ .

Ain Shams' Classics go digital

 Abdel-Monem Zaki, my Friend and colleague in Ain Shams University, has begun blogging in Arabic about digital humanities. His newly started blog is called : Digital Humanities: A New Reading of the Arab Cultural Heritage.

I'm excited to see and fellow what he will be posting in this. I think also that his students will be very much appreciated for this contributions to this field of study which we seek to implement, in cooperation with colleagues from Europe and the USA, in the curricula and study programs of classics department in Ain Shams and else where in Egypt.

This is an excellent start and I wish him all the success and hoping for more to come.